Way back in the 1970s headlines around the world screamed that we were entering another ice age. Global cooling had kicked in, as it does from time to time, and scientific knowledge all those years ago could not explain why.

Of course the ice age didn’t arrive. Actually the world started warming, as it also does from time to time. This time scientists were adamant they knew why. Global warming and, what’s more, it was our fault; we, the humans were causing it. They even gave it a new name, anthropogenic global warming, AGW for short.

AGW was never going to go away, it was destined to get worse and worse. Governments called meetings about it, protocols were drawn up. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was born. Green energy was forced onto us, carbon taxes squeezed our pockets via higher domestic fuel bills but we took it, we were saving the world.

Scientists and politicians alike joined the collective, voicing concerns about the future of the planet, how the seas were going to rise, and island nations would be overwhelmed. Some, such as Al Gore, produced films so frightening that they caused school children to have nightmares. An Inconvenient Truth in my opinion distorted the science to a huge degree, but that’s for you to make up your own mind about.

Then, in the late 1990s something odd happened. Global warming vanished entirely…it morphed into climate change. Being the terrier that I am I couldn’t let it go, why change the name? Well I’ll tell you, they had to. They had to because the planet wasn’t warming, it was cooling…again, as it does from time to time…